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The Spanish Government has finally finished the construction work and circulation tests on the last 131-kilometre stretch of railroad to France. Barcelona, Girona and Figueres are now linked by High Speed Train, although a direct connection between the Catalan capital and France will have to wait until next April. Now, passengers can travel from Barcelona to Girona in only 37 minutes and to Figueres in a total of 53 minutes. If they want to continue to France, they will have to switch trains until April, when the Spanish trains will be standardised to be able to run in France. However, from now on, the Spanish and the French High Speed railway networks will finally be connected, twenty years after the Madrid-Seville line was unveiled. The Catalan President has emphasised that Catalonia is the Autonomous Community with the smallest amount of public infrastructures in Spain.

According to the Catalan Government, the High-Speed Train service linking the Catalan capital with the French border has been delayed one more year, this time until the end of 2013. The reason is that work on two sections of the railway, managed by the Spanish Government, is still pending to be allocated. They are the Barcelona exit and the section through Girona; both total €33 million according to the Catalan Government. The rest is already built and the service between the northern city of Figueres and the French city of Perpignan is already in operation. However, this strategic railway is not fully completed between Figueres and Barcelona due to a long list of delays.

Trains will reach a maximum speed of 310 km/h along some points of the trip. The improvement is due to the implementation of a new navigation system that has reduced the journey time for direct trains by eight minutes. The Spanish train operator, RENFE, hopes to overtake air travel as the preferred way to go from one city to the other. The air route between Barcelona and Madrid is the busiest in Europe and it used to be the busiest in the world.

Fewer trips, cheaper and shorter. More and more Spanish companies are choosing low-cost airlines when it comes to business travel. The Catalan company Vueling has felt the effects of this trend and already has 40% of its passengers travel for work-related purposes.

Lleida has become a clear example of how a high-speed train can change a city. The economic impact after the high-speed train arrival of the conference and meeting sectors has doubled from 8 to 17 million euros.

Joaquim Nadal, responsible for Territory and Infrastructures, denies that the cathedral is at risk by the construction of a tunnel near it, but urges the building firm to check that the Sagrada Família does not have any structural damages.